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Endgame

  • opened: 10/3/2004
  • closed: 5/1/2004
  • Noel Coward Theatre
  • Box Office: 0870 950 0920
  • Details: To 1 May 2004
  • Summary: Samuel Beckett's classic tragicomedy, in which vaudevillian companions Hamm and Clov make a meal out of the few crumbs of comfort on offer in their apocalyptic world, gets a superb revival starring Lee Evans and Michael Gambon. Just months after Sir Peter Hall’s revival of Happy Days, Samuel Beckett is back in the West End, this time with Endgame, where the vaudevillian double-act of Waiting for Godot finds its bleaker counterpoint in the abject repartee of Hamm and Clov, a blind master and goofy servant contemplating the annihilation of the world and their own expiring existences from the vantage point of a comfortless chamber. In Matthew Warchus’s revival, Michael Gambon has been recruited to give us his Hamm, comic Lee Evans – warming up to play Leo Bloom in The Producers later this year – takes on Clov; and Liz Smith and Geoffrey Hutchings take up residence in adjacent dustbins as the decrepit Nell and Nagg. In the Guardian, Michael Billington observed: ‘While Endgame meant a lot to Beckett, I increasingly wonder how much it means to the rest of us, especially if we don't share his view of the unalterable absurdity of existence. My doubts were largely quelled by the heightened theatricality of Warchus's production. Centre-stage sits Gambon's magnificent Hamm, which evokes multiple images: a screaming Bacon Pope, a dying Prospero, a decaying Irish landlord. With a voice oscillating between organ-like thunder and strangled quietness, Gambon brings out Hamm's terminal desperation. Gambon's moulting majesty is perfectly offset by the comic cluelessness of Evans's Clov. The Times’s, Benedict Nightingale admitted ‘to a moment of doubt when I heard that Matthew Warchus had cast Lee Evans as Clov, who may be Hamm’s son and is certainly his slave, in his revival of Endgame. Was the goofy comedian up to the challenge? Yes, he is. Gambon’s Hamm sits in his chair in his embroidered fez, a ratty old fur round his neck, looking like a pasha who has lost his wealth, his power, everything bar a voice that still booms like a mighty cannon defending the Bosphorus. And imagine a blend of Norman Wisdom and a puppet that’s entangled in its own string, and you’ve Evans’s Clov as he half-hobbles, half-scuttles across Rob Howell’s vast, grey, empty set.’ In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer was won over by Lee Evans: ‘At first, in his routine with a stepladder, I feared Evans was going to overdo his tiresome Norman Wisdom impression, but his spastic limbs and village idiot face prove eerily appropriate for Clov, and in a performance that grows in stature and illumination, he never lets his natural funniness obscure the character’s pain and festering sense of grievance.’ In the Independent, Paul Taylor cheered: This is a stunningly good production of Endgame that derives its power from the inspired pairing of the comedian Evans with Michael Gambon, a meaty giant of the legitimate stage. The evening begins and ends with a roll of drums and a clash of cymbals, and between them Warchus orchestrates an event that brilliantly draws on tones ranging from the knockabout of a cruelly handicapped vaudeville double-act to the tragic sonorities sparked between Lear and the Fool, and Prospero and Caliban. In the Daily Mail, Michael Coveney was underwhelmed: ‘The problem is one of sustaining drama through long speeches of specific memory. That would be fine if the overall stage intensity was consistent. It isn’t. Crucially, you never feel that Hamm’s half-dead parents Nell and Nagg are omnipresent in their dustbins.’ In the Daily Express, Robert Gore-Langton moaned: ‘My complaint is that while Lee Evans is totally terrific, director Matthew Warchus’s posh production is a bit snooze-inducing. Nell and Nagg in their bins make nil impact and Gambon, talking in an Irish lilt, doesn’t quite blow your socks off.’ A point contradicted by Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard, who exclaimed: If you want to see a virtuoso display of the art of acting, it is here. As the blind, chairbound Hamm in Samuel Beckett's study of four characters facing global and internal desolation, the great Michael Gambon acts everyone else off the stage with the sheer force of his voice and the eloquence of his spidery fingers.’
  • Author: Samuel Beckett
  • Director: Matthew Warchus
  • Composer: Gary Yershon
  • Lyricist: n/aSet Designer: Rob Howell
  • Lighting Designer: Mark Henderson
  • Costume Designer:
  • Choreographer:
  • Cast Details: Michael Gambon (Hamm); Lee Evans (Clov); Liz Smith (Nell); Geoffrey Hutchings (Nagg).